All eyes on Layton

Election speculation continues to swirl around, but Jack Layton’s apparent willingness to talk deals over the federal budget could mean it’s being avoided, seeing that his are some of the least costly lines in the sand. In fact, he signalled that he wasn’t willing to vote against the budget without reading it this time, which caught a lot of people’s attention. Suffice to say, election speculation will continue to be Ottawa’s favourite pastime for the next several weeks.

In Winnipeg, Michael Ignatieff laid out more specifics for his plans for an enhanced family care EI benefit, while in Kitchener, he spoke about the damage Harper has done to our political system (like the mess he’s creating in the Senate, perhaps?).

On a similar note, Linda Diebel looks at the politics of fear that are de rigueur in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa.

My blog post the other day on the call I got from the Conservative Party on supporting Israel sparked the interest of the CBC’s Kady O’Malley, who took a deeper look into just what was going on.

Critics on the consular affairs file have big expectations for Diane Ablonczy as the new minister of state.

Here’s a look at how spending for capital expenditures in prisons is outpacing spending for rehabilitation programming by a huge margin, as if locking up more criminals together is going to be the solution to crime in this country.

And just in time for Fox News North – err, SunTV News, it looks like the CRTC is going to be relaxing its rules around false or misleading news. That’s going to go over well, as we see more over-the-top rhetoric slowly infiltrating our own news outlets.